


Soft, Squishy Humans

by orphan_account



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-06 21:11:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11044419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Maze takes care of Linda in the hospital.  Linda makes Maze feel feelings.New ship, new fandom.  Be gentle.  :)





	1. Chapter 1

It had happened so slowly, Maze hadn't noticed it. 

All this time, she'd been chiding Luci for his attachment to these soft, squishy humans (and to Chloe in particular, though she was beginning to understand that one). She hadn't seen it in herself.

She was Mazikeen, Lucifer’s right hand, a demon, a warrior, a bloodhound.  How had she let herself become vulnerable like this?  Not even with an angel like Amenediel either, but this soft, small human. 

“Linda.”  Her voice was almost a sob.  She had been bringing her troubles to Linda week after week, and Linda had listened, and helped her.  And Maze had given back in the ways she knew how: by promising, if not out loud then in her own mind, to keep Linda safe.  Maze was good at killing, and she was good at keeping people safe.  Look how long she'd kept Lucifer alive --millennia!-- despite his dogged insistence on doing stupid, life threatening things.

But Linda… she'd failed Linda, and now Linda-- _her_ Linda-- was lying on her office floor with a weeping wound in her belly, dealt to her by the goddess of all creation.  

Amenediel slowed time to a crawl, then, for her.  For what Linda meant to him as a friend, yes, but also because he saw in Maze’s face, he knew what had happened:  Maze would break if Linda could not be saved.  Linda was the one Maze went to to celebrate her successes, vent her frustrations.  

When had she become so maudlin? she wondered.  But it didn't matter.  All that mattered was that Linda had to live.  The sweat broke on Amenediel’s forehead as Maze took Linda ever so carefully into her arms and brought her to the hospital.  

She smelled Linda's hair, clean and scented with tea tree oil (of course, what else?) as she walked through the hospital doors, and thought, _This is not the way I wanted to smell her hair for the first time._  She felt Linda’s weight in her arms and thought, _This is not the reason I wanted to find myself carrying her._

Linda could not die.  Simply could not.  Not because Maze had anything more to say to Linda; Linda knew her for who she was, as well as anyone ever had.  Linda knew she was a demon and had decided she didn't care.  But she had too many things she wanted to do with Linda, and she was only realizing that now, as she stood on the precipice of losing her.  

She wanted to take Linda to bed, not like she wanted to with other people, for recreation on idle curiosity, or even a friendfuck like with Luci.  She wanted to spend all night with her.  Linda sometimes looked at her from behind those thick-rimmed glasses and her eyes would dance a little and Maze wanted to take those glasses off her, lay in bed with her and be looked at that way, for ages.  

Linda was a soft, squishy human. But she was Maze’s squishy human.  And if she didn't make it out of this, Maze would destroy the goddess of all creation herself.  


	2. Goodnight, Moon

Squishy humans need a long time to heal from stab wounds, Maze discovers.  Two whole weeks, Linda will be in the hospital.  And then she’ll need to take it easy for three or four more after she’s allowed to go home.  

She visits Linda every day.  She brings booze that Linda can’t drink yet, pizza she can’t eat yet.  So Maze drinks the booze and eats the pizza for both of them.  Linda is still exhausted but she seems both perturbed and amused by this turn of events.  But each day she looks a little better.

“I brought you your laptop,” she announces on the fourth day, setting the travel bag down beside the bed.  “And some porn.”

Linda laughs so hard she almost pops a stitch.

“That’s very sweet,” she says, and she seems to mean it, “but I don’t think I can watch porn in my hospital bed.”

Maze is glad to see her squishy human laughing, even if it hurt a little.

Finally, Linda asks her to bring some books.  

Maze nods sagely.  “Like porno books, right?”  She winks.  “Got it.”

Linda sighs, “No,” and she restrains a chuckle.  “Just something to read.”

Maze needs more guidance than this.

Lucifer is no help.

“Linda wants books,” she says urgently into her phone.  “What kind of books does she like?”

“Did you try some porno?”  Luci asks helpfully.

Maze sighs.  “She says she doesn’t want that.”

“Then I’m fresh out of ideas,” he sighs.  

Trixie finds Maze sullenly browsing Amazon on her phone, trying to figure out what to bring Linda.  

“What are you looking for?” she asks, hopping up beside her and peeking at her phone.  She’s wearing a tutu and a fireman’s hat.  Maze doesn’t like the tutu but the fireman’s hat isn’t bad.

“My friend in the hospital wants me to bring her some books.  But I don’t know what she likes.”

Trixie is good at human things.  She thinks about it for a minute.  Then she disappears to her room and comes back with a stack of hardcover books with bright colors all over them:   _ Maisy Goes to the Hospital, _ about a mouse in the hospital.   _ Curious George Goes to the Hospital _ , about a monkey going to the hospital.   _ Oh the Places You’ll Go _ , which doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the hospital.  And another one called  _ Goodnight Moon. _

Trixie held up the last two.  “These are just books that are good for when you want to feel happy before you go to sleep.  But they’re  _ really _ good.”

Maze is skeptical, but Trixie reassures her that they’re the best books she has and that Linda will definitely love them.  So they fist bump.  

Maze brings the books to the hospital.  Linda seems terribly amused.  She’s looking better and better each day, her color is returning, and she doesn’t seem as fragile as she did the first week.  

“And because I’m such a good friend,” Maze preens, “I’ll read them to you.  Pick any one you want.”

Linda smiles and points to _ Goodnight Moon.   _ Looks like Trixie was right.  

“In the great green room   
There was a telephone   
And a red balloon   
And a picture of  
The cow jumping over the moon   
And there were three little bears sitting on chairs   
And two little kittens   
And a pair of mittens…" 

Linda looks dreamy, and she smiles sleepily listening to Maze read this very simple little book.  Linda looks dreamy, and Maze’s belly feels warm and content, and she reads until Linda falls asleep.  She sets the book on the bedside table.  After lingering next to the bed, she leans down, and kisses Linda’s forehead.  It’s mostly chaste, but a little bit not.  She still thinks Linda would have enjoyed the porn better, but maybe she’s just too tired, still.

Maze draws the blinds, and pulls the sheet up to carefully tuck it under Linda’s chin.  “Goodnight moon,” she mutters, “goodnight room.”  She takes one last long look at Linda’s face.  “Goodnight, squishy human.  Come home soon.”


	3. Not-Belonging

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Linda continues to improve. Maze continues to care for her and bring books.

Maze was made to belong to someone.  Not in that weepy, nauseating way that humans were, and not like a pet, but the way she had belonged to Lucifer.  He was who she had originally been made for, and the first few millennia, it had been fine.  She protected him, drank with him, shared women with him, tortured the wicked with him, fought with him.  They sometimes bickered like children.  Mostly she protected him, though.  Luci had had a death wish ever since his father had tossed him out of Heaven and, well, that was getting to be a little while ago now.

Anyway, their friendship had been straining since they came to Earth.  Luci was changing and he didn’t want her around all the time.  He wanted to love the way humans did, with Chloe.  And that was okay, she guessed.  She was changing, too.  She was learning to exist without him.  It wasn’t always bad.

But she didn’t like not belonging to someone.  It still felt weird and a little wrong.  Not all the time, of course.  She liked drinking with her friends (she had friends!  That was new.) and she felt pretty comfortable when she was hunting humans, or beating people up for Chloe, or Luci, or Linda, or … well, whoever, really.  She was good at that, and she enjoyed it.

She tried to fasten herself to Chloe, to be the same Maze for her that she had been for Luci, but that didn’t really work.  Chloe was different from Lucifer, and didn’t need her to do the same things.  She especially seemed to not need a fuck buddy, which was a little disappointing.  Maze would have liked that.  She’d seen that movie of Chloe’s.  Anyway, the only thing that was the same was that Chloe needed to be protected too.  Chloe and Lucifer had that in common, that compulsion to rush into danger.  Maze finds it a little tiring but secretly, also fulfilling, because that is in the building blocks of her blood and bones, that compulsion to protect the idiot to whom she had attached herself.

These ties, they are not too tight, but not too loose.  They are friendships.  Maze likes them, mostly.

Linda is another matter altogether.

 

Linda had never asked for her protection or her loyalty.  Maze just one day found herself giving it.  And not in the manner in which she had always been accustomed to.  She never tries to be the Maze she was for Lucifer.  She still swears to herself that Linda is under her protection but that’s only because she doesn’t know a better way to care about someone.  You kill for them.  Preferably with knives.  Maze really, really likes knives.

And when that feeling of not-belonging starts to gnaw at her, it’s Linda’s door she comes to.  It’s been that way for awhile now.  

And now Linda is broken and Maze has to learn a different way to care because there’s nobody to kill for this.  The Goddess of all Creation has been banished to another world and she’s beyond Maze’s reach.  What’s left when you can’t show your caring through vengeance?

You bring contraband Chinese food.  And you read to her: Maisy, Curious George, Dr Seuss, Goodnight Moon.

Linda asks in her delicate way, “Maze, I really -really- appreciate you bringing these books, but…. I wonder if you can find something a little more… adult?”

This should not have been a surprise.  They were Trixie’s books after all.  “Like, you mean…?”

“NOT porn,” Linda says, before the words even leave Maze’s mouth.  “Maybe, you know… literature?  Some mysteries or something?”

Maze is confident.  Maze knows she’ll find the thing.

 

*****

 

Maze doesn’t know the first thing about “literature.”

She asks Chloe.  She has to first wait a little while for Chloe to stop ranting about her feelings.  Detective Douche did something to make her roommate mad so Maze sits and pretends to listen while Prodigy blares in her earbuds.  When Chloe stops talking, Maze nods as if she’s been listening.  From the annoyed look on her face, Maze guesses she’s supposed to make some kind of sounds to indicate that she sympathizes with Chloe and is disgusted with Dan.  She sort of snorts and asks, “Want me to kill him for you?” She whips out her twin curved knives and starts casually swinging them in loops around her thumbs.

Chloe’s jaw works a little.  She hates it when Maze just sits around playing with her knives.  Too bad.  “No, thanks, I’d rather you didn’t kill the father of my child.”

Maze rolls her eyes.  “Suit yourself.”  Then she changes the subject, puts the knives away, and asks, “Roomie.  Do you have any mystery books?  Linda needs books in the hospital.”

Chloe doesn’t have loads of books, but she has a couple of cheap paperback thrillers that she thinks might be the thing.  Maze is pleased.  She thumbs through them.  There’s a little violence.  Someone gets shot.  There seem to be some chase scenes and a fist fight.  She understands why Linda might like this.  She skips to the end.  The protagonist dies.  She’s not sure that Linda will like that.

She goes to visit Ella at the precinct.  Ella looks sweet and innocent but Maze can tell she’s not.  Ella has a past.  Maze might not know exactly what it is, but she can smell it.  It smells like sex, weed and boosted cars.  That’s all Maze really needs to know.

“I need books,” she says.  “For Linda.  She’s in the hospital.”

Ella nods slowly.  “Linda, the blonde we went drinking with that time?”

Maze nods.

“She really liked watching you kick those guys’ asses.”

Maze feels a little heat in her face when Ella says that.  Demons don’t blush, though, so it must be something else.  “I’m the best,” she says with a shrug.

Ella snorts.  “And modest, too.”  She looks at her for a moment.  “You…”  Her eyes twinkle.  “You like her, don’t you?”

Maze straightens herself up and tries to glare at Ella.  She thrusts her chin out in the way that usually means “Fight me.”  Ella doesn’t look scared.  “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you like her?  Like, like her?”

Maze shrugs.  “No.”  But Ella still looks at her with her eyes dancing and smirking like a little shit and Maze thinks with irritation that the girl is too smart for her own good.  “Maybe.  So what?”

Ella chuckled.  “Well, maybe you need to bring her something a little bit more special than some trashy thrillers.”

Ella scribbles down some titles on a piece of paper.  Maze goes to a Barnes and Noble and buys all of them.  Maze would have liked the trashy thriller, because she likes trashy things.  Except Linda.  Linda isn’t trashy.  And according to Ella, neither are these books.  

 

*******

 

Linda is awake when Maze arrives, watching Dr Phil and yelling at the screen, “YOU’RE GOING TO SET HER RECOVERY BACK A DECADE WITH THAT APPROACH, YOU HACK SON OF A BITCH!”

Classy, Maze thinks, and smiles.

She plops down next to the bed and holds up the books, introducing each one with the general summary she’d gleaned from reading the back and thumbing through it.

Jeanette Winterson’s “The Power Book”:  
“Cross-dressing girl in the 1500s.”

“Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe”:  
“Lesbians in the south in the 20s.”  She can’t help editorializing, “It looks good.  I think they kill a guy.”

Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer”:  
“Drunk guy in Paris.”

Linda seems impressed with the selection.  Her eyes linger on the last one for a moment, but she doesn’t reach for it.  “You know, Maze, you don’t have to read to me anymore,” she says after a minute.  “I’m feeling better.  I can sit up and hold a book and everything now.”  

Maze feels like she’d taken a punch to the gut.  She likes reading to Linda.

Linda’s face softens, then.  “But if you want to…”  

That afternoon, they start reading “The Power Book.”  Maze doesn’t like gentle stories, usually, but this one, she doesn’t mind.  Sometimes Linda closes her eyes and listens while Maze reads.  Sometimes, Maze can feel her watching through her thick-rimmed glasses, smiling at the rise and fall of Maze’s voice.  It’s a weird story, but she starts to appreciate the music in the words that the writer chooses, and starts to understand why Ella told her to bring it.  

Linda doesn’t need Maze to read to her, but she likes it.  Maze reads until it’s dark out and then they share some shumai that she smuggled in.  She doesn’t kiss Linda goodbye, but she thinks about it.  That feeling of not-belonging is nowhere on her radar.  


	4. Till the Sap Runs Down

Linda's face has almost returned to its old color. The pale, ashy grey is gone, for the most part. Maze comes in the next day and looks at her, takes in way the corners of her eyes crinkle when she smiles. Maze has fucked a lot of people since she came to Earth, and most of them were young, hard, tight creatures. Linda is softer and older than all of them, but Maze likes that about her. She wants her more than she ever wanted them.

Maze reads some more of “The Power Book.” The heroine has been running around pretending to be a man with a tulip bulb in her pants. Maze doesn't understand how that fools anyone. But Linda is enjoying the story, so they keep going.

The heroine, disguised as a man, has to take the princess’s virginity. She does it with the flower in her trousers. Maze feels like there's probably symbolism she doesn't get, but she reads it to Linda anyway. The heroine fucks the princess with a tulip and the green sap dribbles down her thigh and weirdly, it's not quite porn but it's ... hot. Linda is watching her, but really, Maze can see, Linda is looking very specifically at her mouth as she reads. Maze is starting the think Ella might be even smarter than Trixie.

She stops and looks at Linda when the chapter is over. She's got a flush in her cheeks. “You still wanna just read these yourself?” she challenges.

Linda shakes her head.

Victory, thinks Maze. And she leans forward over the bed, careful not to jostle it because her squishy human is still a little bit broken, and kisses Linda on the mouth. It's more tentative than Maze is used to being but she suspects that's because she's trying to do something different with this kiss. She's not trying to have something or take something. She's trying to give something. Hell if she knows what, but she's dying to figure that out.

Linda's lips are a little chapped and she smells like hospital because she's been in here too damn long, but Maze doesn't care. All she cares is that after a few stunned seconds, Linda kisses back. Her mouth is soft and there's a little tongue, so little you could almost miss it, but it's there. One of her hands settles on Maze’s shoulder.

But then Linda is tapping her shoulder, gently pushing her away. “Maze.”

Maze is grinning. Linda isn't. She’s smiling, but she looks a little sad, too. “No good?” Maze asks. She's still leaning close to Linda, and it still feels good.

“No,” Linda sighs, “it's just… Maze, I know you don't have a lot of tools at your disposal to express… let's say, softer feelings like caring, and concern… But you don't need to do that --kiss me, I mean-- just because you're worried or because you blame yourself for what happened.”

Maze scowls. “That's not it.”

Linda stares at her for a hot minute, then bites: “Then what is it?”

Linda is going to make her talk about her feelings. Maze sucks at this. Because Linda is right (she always is about things like this), these are soft feelings. “I wanted you before this happened.” This is all she can find to say right now.

Linda looks uncomfortable. “You know, when Lucifer-”

Maze cuts her off. “This isn't like Lucifer.” She's a little snappish but she can't help it. Back when they first met Linda, Luci was paying for his therapy with sex, not because he didn't have money, but just because he got off on the fact that he *could*. “I'm not trying to pay you back for anything, and I'm not trying to prove anything.”

Linda smirks then, and her eyes flicker all over Maze’s face, looking warm and amused. “Okay, that's good… so then, what is it?”

Maze is still close enough that she could just kiss Linda again and shut her up, but she doesn't. Linda wants her to talk about her feelings, and Maze normally hates that, but she can't say no. “I just want you, isn't that enough?”

Linda looks … sad? Maze doesn't know. “Not at my age,” she chuckles.

Maze turns wicked now. She grins. “I'm older than you by about four thousand years.”

“Touché,” Linda laughs. “But I'm human. We have a much shorter time horizon than demons.” Her hand flutters up from Maze’s shoulder to her cheek. “I want sex,” she says, and her voice is quiet, warm, and gentle. Maze’s blood surges when she says this. “But it has to mean something. And it can't come at the expense of a friendship.”

“It won't,” Maze promises, and kisses Linda again.

Linda's mouth is soft and willing and just a little more open than the first time. Maze doesn't understand how it can feel like Linda wants her but also feel like she's saying no. It lasts longer than the first one but still not long enough.

“Figure out, if you can,” Linda says slowly when they're done, “what it is you want from me, exactly. And we’ll talk about it.”

Maybe it's better, Maze thinks. Maybe you don't start a … a thing … from a hospital bed.

She leaves, trying to figure out the answer to Linda's question. What does she want?

_I want Linda to be my home._

_She already is._

_I want Linda to take care of me._

_She already does._

_I want to belong to her. I want her to belong to me._

_I want Linda. I want to make her feel the hot, sticky, good feelings you get in bed with someone who knows what they're doing. I want to fuck her with flowers and watch the sap run down._

_I want her. And what do you call all that?_


	5. Reckless Words

Two days after their kiss, Maze and Lucifer pick Linda up from the hospital.  Luci chauffeurs them back to Linda’s house.  Maze shoos him away, but won’t tell him why.  She didn’t feel like dealing with the annoying-little-brother shtick that always made Amenadiel want to throttle him.

Linda is still sore and her mobility isn't great.  Maze sets the shower temperature for her and exits the bathroom, thinking about what she's going to say to Linda when she gets out.  She's listened to about ten hours’ worth of love songs and read a bunch of poetry that mostly didn't mean anything to her. 

She hears some pained grunting from inside the bathroom, over the noise of the running water.  “Linda?”  She knocks on the door.  “Are you alright?”

Linda's voice sounds tight.  “Fine, thanks. I just… trying to wash my back was probably a little premature.”

Maze frowns.  She knows that tightness.  Linda is in pain.  “Want me to help you?”

“As long as we’re clear that that's all you're doing,” Linda replies after a beat of hesitation.  

“Totally clear.”  Maze enters the steam-filled bathroom and sees Linda’s silhouette through the curtain, bracing herself against the wall to stay upright.  Maze draws the curtain and Linda has her back turned, so she can't tell if Linda popped a stitch or if she's bleeding at all.  “Did you hurt yourself?” she asks softly.

 “Not in any permanent way,” and it's clear Linda is trying to be funny.  

Maze snorts and takes the soapy washcloth from Linda's hand.  “Hold still,” she orders, and it’s silly because Linda's not going anywhere.  

Sun from the small sliver of window streams through the cloud of steam and spattering water, and Maze spends half a second caught in looking at the way the light almost passes through Linda's skin.  And then she takes the cloth and gently starts moving its soapy, wet warmth over Linda's back.  She starts between the shoulder blades, and then works outward, almost picturing that she's painting wings there with the warm, soapy water.  Linda lets out a slow breath, maybe of relief or maybe something else, but she doesn't say stop.

* * *

She works down her back in slow circles, watching the suds and water run down Linda’s skin, pooling for a split second at the base of her spine before continuing on its path down her body.  Linda's head drops forward against the tile, and she relaxes.  Maze is incredibly content.

“Could you do that a little bit harder, please?” Linda mumbles after moment.

Maze smirks to herself, but doesn't do anything other than oblige her.  It would be so easy to push this over into sex.  So easy to go other places with that warm, dripping washcloth.  Linda feels relaxed under her touch.  But that's not how Linda wants this to go.  She's made that clear.  So Maze waits.  

After spending way too long washing Linda's back, Maze helps her out of the shower and retreats to the living room again.  She pours herself a scotch and soda.

 

******

 

 She’s halfway through her drink when Linda emerges, wearing a thick, fluffy white bathrobe of the precise variety that Maze would have expected her to own.  She doesn’t ask if she's got anything on under it.  Her hair is down, still damp, sticking her face and neck.  She’s looking at Maze with those warm, smiling eyes.  She sits down next to her on the couch and asks, “So, did you think about what we talked about?”

Maze nods.  “Yeah.”

“And?”

Maze struggles for a bit.  Finally she says, “I know you want me to tell you I’m in love with you.  And the problem is, Linda, I’m a demon.  I wasn’t built to love people.  Not like you people do it, okay?”

Linda frowns at this.

“But, I… when I thought I was going to lose you, I was…”  Her eyes well up at the memory of carrying Linda, limp in her arms, to the hospital.  “... it felt like someone was ripping my guts out, because if you died, I knew I’d never see you again.  I know you’d go to Heaven and that’s… I can’t follow you there.”

Linda looks wry at this.  “I don’t know, Maze.  I have a few things that might send me to Hell.”

Maze doesn’t buy it.  “That, I could do,” she decides.  “Lucifer won’t go back, but I could.  There’s a vacuum of power.  I could rule down there.  I could protect you.  Shit...You could be my queen.  That wouldn’t be so bad, right?”  Linda looks bemused at this.  Maze knows these are reckless words, but they feel sincere.  “But, I don’t want that.  I want you here, on Earth, with me.”

Linda purses her mouth thoughtfully.  “That’s … weirdly sweet.  The whole queen of Hell thing, I mean. 

Maze grabs her hand.  “I’m just myself when I’m with you.  I don’t feel like I have to be a certain way, or that you need me to shape myself to your needs.  You take me the way I am.  You told me I’m awesome.  Nobody tells me that.  Nobody ever told me that in four thousand years.  I was made to belong to someone, but this is the first time I ever had a choice who I belonged to, and I’m picking you.” 

Linda looks overwhelmed by all this.

“You’re my best friend.  And I don’t know if I can love you like you squishy humans do it, but this is what I have, Linda.  This is what I’m offering.”  She waits, watching Linda process what she’s heard.

Linda’s eyes are glassy and the corners are all crinkled the way they get when she smiles.  She squeezes Maze’s hands for a moment, and then leans into her.  Maze is thrilled.  She lets Linda come to her, take her face between her hands, and kiss her.  This time, Linda is not reserved.  She doesn’t hold back.  Maze is surprised at the way Linda’s mouth explores hers, tastes her lips, nibbles at them, probes in with her tongue.  Maze lets herself open up and kiss her that way, intimately, softly, deeply.  Linda is so soft, she thinks, everything about her is soft, even the parts of her that are strong.  She feels Linda’s nails raking gently through her hair. 

“You already know what love is, Maze,” she whispers.  “It’s just choosing each other.  Again, and again.”

 They kiss again, and Maze doesn’t care about anything except this.  Linda has washed the hospital off of herself and now she smells like steam, and tea tree oil, and her skin is warm and still a little damp, and her lips are smooth with lip balm, and her mouth tastes like peppermint.  “Are you choosing me, Linda?” she asks, and she hopes, she hopes, but she already knows.

“Yeah,” Linda mumbles against her lips.  And then she stops again, and pulls back.

“What is it?”  Maze doesn’t want to stop kissing her.  She wants to kiss her, and kiss her, and then carry her to bed and kiss her some more, and then make her come over and over until she can’t move.  But Linda is looking at her, and Maze recognizes that hesitation in her face.

“There’s something I need, before we go any farther with this.”

“Whatever you need.”

Linda brushes her fingers down Maze’s cheek.  “I need to see your face.  Your real face.”

 _Fuck,_ Maze thinks.   _Fuck._


	6. Our Little Imperfections

In Hell, Maze used to show her real face to humans to scare them.  It generally worked.  In her time on Earth, only Trixie has seen it, and Trixie almost didn’t count.  The only time she did it was on Halloween, when the whole point was to look weird and scary, and Trixie had squealed with delight.  Maze was willing to bet that if she just wandered into Trixie’s room in the middle of the night in the middle of February with half her face rotting off, she’d get a different sort of squeal.

“Linda,” she says after a moment.  “Are you… are you sure you want that?  I mean… it’s… you know.  It’s a little scary.”

Linda’s smile is sweet and patient.  “Well, we all have our little imperfections.”

Maze groans.  “I know that Linda, but yours are like, human imperfections.  What, you have love handles or something?  Maybe one tit is bigger than the other?”  She pauses.  “OK, I know that’s not true, but… my point is, whatever yours are, they’re no big deal.  I want you, not your body.”

Linda is laughing.  “You know my girls are the same size?  You’ve looked that closely?”

Maze nods. “Uh-huh.”  Linda is her pretty, soft, patient human.  She doesn’t want to spoil it.  She kisses her again, and Linda doesn’t protest.  Resting her forehead against Linda’s, she explains, “Linda… it’s not just a little imperfection.  I mean, you’ve seen Luci’s face.  It scared you so bad you didn’t want to see me when I came to your door.  Mine’s not any better.  I used to use my face to make people shit their pants in Hell.”

Linda chuckles.  “Well, I’ve sort of had my demon cherry popped already.  Thank Lucifer for that.”  She squeezes Maze’s shoulders.  “I can’t sleep with someone wearing a mask.”  She kisses the end of Maze’s nose.  “Well, there was that one time at Mardi Gras, but that was a really long time ago.  So, yeah.  I don’t do that any more.”

Maze hesitates a moment.  “I don’t want to scare you away.” 

“You won’t.”

Maze’s hands tremble a little.  But she does it.  This is, unbelievably, what Linda wants.  She lets the mask fade away, and Linda can see what’s underneath.  She watches, waits for that moment of disgust, but it doesn’t come.  Linda’s eyes are dark and shiny, attentive and observant, as they take in every detail of the half of her face that isn’t much of a face, really; her burned-out eye socket, the latticework of melted flesh and exposed muscle where the jaw and teeth and blackened gums sit, grinning at no-one.  After a moment that feels like forever, Linda asks, “Can I touch you here?”

Maze doesn’t have the face to make the expressions she wants, but she nods.  She feels those gentle fingertips graze over the tattered skin around her cheekbone and she gasps, because nobody has touched that since Lucifer and that was a long time ago, now.

“Does it hurt?” Linda asks.  

Maze shakes her head.  She doesn’t want to speak, because the other problem is that without the pretense of the mask, half her tongue is a mushy mess and her speech is slurred and sloppy.  She just closes her one good eye, and lets Linda’s fingers gently explore the half of her face that isn’t smooth, that isn’t perfect.  The truth is, it does hurt a little, but it’s just that she doesn’t mind.  The little sparks of hurt are accompanied by the ache of being touched someplace that never, never gets touched.  It’s not that she can’t feel Linda’s touch when her mask is in place, but there’s no substitute for the directness of this, the intimacy of it.

“I don’t know,” Linda decides after a moment, “I could get used to this, I think.”

For the second time in two weeks, Linda is making her want to cry.  First out of grief, now out of relief.  “There’sh jusht one thing about thish fashe,” she finally says, because she has to just break down and say it and deal with the speech impediment.  “It makesh kisshing kinda hard.”

Linda looks like someone punched a puppy right in front of her face, with a kind of aching fondness and sympathy for how hard it was for her to show this face to her.  “Oh, Maze, that’s alright.  Look, if you want to put your face back, it’s okay, but just know you don’t need to with me.”  

Relieved, Maze puts it back.  There will be plenty of time to explore that.  “Also,” she says, glad to be fully articulate again, “it makes it a little tricky to do the other things, you know?”

Linda laughs quietly.  “Mazikeen Smith,” she says, lingering with droll amusement on that phony last name,  “I do not have it in me tonight.  Are you serious?  I couldn’t even handle washing my back in the shower.”

Maze nods.  “Yeah, but I did that for you.”  She traces her finger down the sliver of skin where Linda’s robe closes over her chest.  “I can do other things for you, too.  I can.  Without popping your stitches, I swear.”  Linda’s warm chuckle at this tells Maze that she’s not entirely opposed to this idea.  Her fingers are roaming back up, up the sides of Linda’s neck, and she can feel her growing warm under her touch.  “I may be a demon from the depths of Hell,” she purred, “but I know how to be gentle as an angel when I want to.”  Her fingers brush over Linda’s lips.  “I can do things for you, and they won’t hurt, not even a little bit.”

Linda is biting her lip, and making little humming sounds.  “At some point,” she sighs, “when I’m feeling a little more… together… I won’t mind if it hurts a little.”

Maze smiles.  She knew Linda would be more fun than those tidy little sundresses and thick-rimmed glasses would imply.  She tugs at the belt around her waist, loosening it a little at a time.  “And I really, really look forward to that.  But right now, I just want to do things for you.  Can you let me do that?”

Linda kissues her, hot and deep, and then leans back on the couch.  “Yeah,” she says after a moment.  “Yeah, you can do that.”

She tugs the belt the rest of the way, and her thick, white bathrobe falls open.  Maze doesn't know who to thank, because God wouldn’t have given her a gift like this, and Lucifer is too self-obsessed to think of it on his own.  

Mazikeen is a lucky, lucky demon.

Linda is naked under that robe.


	7. Free and Unfettered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for taking this little ride with me! I'll probably write them some more, I've only just began to play with them and I like them an awful lot.

Linda is reclined on the couch and Maze spends a few moments taking in everything:  all the little nicks and burns, mostly healed by now, that Lucifer’s mother had left on her, the wound in her belly that nearly took her life, which is covered with gauze and tape, but Maze knows is still stitched up underneath that.  And then just, everything she is – her smooth skin, ample hips, tits to match, and all those little imperfections that a woman her age ought to have, and yet Maze wants her more than a hundred flawless bodies that she’s had in her time on Earth.  She has the thought that she could get lost in those soft, generous breasts and is already speculating how they’ll feel in her hands.  

Linda is watching her face with curiosity.  She doesn’t seem worried about what Maze will think, isn’t focused on preening or putting on a show, the way all those younger, tighter boys and girls had been.  She’s just interested in Maze, in what she wants to do, in what she thinks and feels.  “You good, Maze?” she asks softly.

Maze nods slowly.  “Yeah.  I’m just enjoying this moment, because I only get it once. “

“What do you mean, only once?”

“I mean…”  Maze floundered for the words.  “I only get to see you naked for the first time once.  I’m not gonna rush through it.”

Linda looks so warm when she says that.  It was the right thing to say, but it was also true.  

Mazikeen doesn’t rush through any of it.  Not pulling the robe the rest of the way off, not exploring her skin, being careful to avoid the places that still looked wounded.  She takes her time, works down her body, without putting any weight on her soft, breakable human.  She wants to know what it’s like to do this without having to hold back this much, but she doesn’t mind this.  Linda’s opened up for her, and the least she can do is reward that.  She sucks gently, kisses her skin inch by inch, looking for all her sensitivities, and Linda is pleasantly vocal about it when Maze finds them.  She’s warm, and tastes clean, and Maze almost thinks she could just keep up like this for hours.

 But Linda is tapping her shoulder after what feels like a while, and Maze can hear a note of desperation in her voice.  “I…can you… stop teasing me, please?”

Maze grins.  “But I was made to torture people.”

“Yes, the wicked, dammit!” Linda exclaims, and the frustration in her tone is evident.

“You look wicked to me,” Maze says, and begins kissing Linda’s inner thighs until she’s moaning loud and begging for Maze to quit playing around and lick her like she knows she intends to do.

But Maze doesn’t want to wait anymore, and she settles down on the floor between Linda’s knees, and she’s gentle as a breeze, gentle as angels, but she gives Linda everything she wants and more.  She’s worked her up so much that it takes very little to finish her the first time, and not much more to finish her the second.  She wants to take her time and enjoy her first tastes of Linda, and she draws it out as long as she can, contentedly nursing orgasm after orgasm from her until Linda is tapping her on the shoulder and breathlessly telling her that she doesn’t think she can come another time without dropping dead.

Maze doesn’t want that.  Nobody wants that.  She reluctantly agrees to stop giving Linda uncontrollable orgasms.  She curls up on the couch next to her, closes her robe, pulls the soft plaid throw over her, and they sleep.

*****

It’s going to be a few weeks more, at least, before Linda can really have sex the way they both would like to, but Maze enjoys gently and carefully making her come.  They like sex on the couch.  They like sex in the bed.  They try the shower but Linda isn’t really strong enough yet to stay standing when she comes, even with Maze supporting her from behind.  But she will be.  And every day that goes by, Maze learns more and more of what Linda likes, and her fingers and her mouth are getting to be real experts at reducing Linda to rubble.

Linda gets tired of only receiving after about a week into things, so they find positions that will be comfortable and still let her do things for Maze.  She can sit back on the couch and Maze can straddle her lap, and Linda enjoys having unrestricted access to Maze’s body.  She’s curious, her Dr. Linda, wants to know if it’s just the same making a demon come as it is a human.  She’s tickled to discover that it’s not so different, although she reports that occasionally she gets struck by a wave of heat and a little whiff of sulphur if she makes her come really hard.  She can lie down in the bed and Maze can ride her mouth and Maze really, really likes that.  Both for what it is, and for what it lets her imagine might be possible as Linda gets stronger. 

After a month, neither of them can imagine what life was like before they became lovers.  It feels as if there was never a time when it wasn’t so.  Linda has found ways to incorporate the tattered, ruined part of Maze’s face into their sex, so that she doesn’t feel she has to wear her mask all the time.  Sometimes she washes Maze’s face as foreplay, because she’s come to understand how the pain of it is a kind of pleasant intimacy for her.  They play with each other, with different kinds of good pain, and Maze knows without a doubt that she has become Linda’s, that she belongs to her now.  She would kill for her (she already has, but no matter).  She would die for her (but hopes she doesn’t have to).  Her bones and blood and skin and teeth all need her, and Linda is teaching her all the little things about how she wants to be loved, the way that squishy humans do it.  Maze doesn’t understand everything, but she tries.   

But she wonders.  She wonders.  

“Linda.”  They’re laying in bed after what is probably the most strenuous sex they’ve had thus far.  Maze is feeling around for the keys to the handcuffs, which should be on the side table, but her fingers aren’t finding them.

“Hm?” Linda is drowsy, having been teased and tormented and fucked about a dozen different ways in the last two hours.  She’s adorable when she’s all sex-sleepy, Maze thinks.

“You know I belong to you, right?”

Linda tries to push her eyes open further, but it only sort of half-works.  “Do you?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”  Linda yawns.

“Do you… feel that way, too?”

Linda gazes at her in the blue of the evening.  “You mean do I belong to you, too?”

Maze nods.

“Well,” Linda says, her eyes flicking up to the headboard, “you’ve got me cuffed to the bed, that ought to tell you something.”

Maze smiles a little, but she’s not quite satisfied.

Linda can see that, though, and she expands.  “Maze, this… what we have… is the most… honest intimacy I’ve had with anyone in a long time.  I’m glad you feel you belong with me.  I don’t want anyone else right now, either, you know.”

Maze is confused.  “You mean you don’t want to have threesomes sometimes?”

Linda laughs, but Maze isn’t bothered.  It isn’t malicious laughter.  “Oh, Maze… Listen … let’s put a pin that, okay?  I’m not saying a hard no, but let’s just say… not for a while, alright?  I think we just need to be with each other for a while and see how we do with that.”

“But we’re doing great,” Maze protests.

“Yeah, we are, so far,” Linda agrees.  “I’m not saying a forever no.  I’m just saying I’m not ready for that.  And I’d rather if you didn’t do this with anyone else, either.”

That fidelity thing, Maze thinks.  Another one of those human things she doesn’t understand.  Linda has her in a way that nobody else will.  “I couldn’t if I tried.  I could fuck other people but it wouldn’t be the same as what we have.  You know all of me.”

Linda smiles.  “Anyway, to answer your question, yes.  I’m glad you picked me.  I’m glad you belong with me.  And I do, I do.  I do feel that I belong with you.  And, at the moment, I also feel I belong to you, thanks to these surprisingly comfortable fur-lined handcuffs, which by the way, I’d love if you could let me out of now.”

Maze sighs.  “I can’t find the key.”

“Shit.” 

Maze shrugs.  She sits up, grabs one cuff in each hand, and snaps the chain without breaking much of a sweat, and Linda is free and unfettered.

Linda is giving her a burning stare.  “Oh my God.  Did you just snap that chain with your bare hands?”

Maze preens a little.  “Yeah, I did.”

“You need to fuck me again, right now.”

Maze grins.  Is this squishy human love?  She doesn’t know.  But she’s happy.


End file.
